from OCLC Research

Monthly Archives: August 2009

Last Friday the Encoded Archival Context (EAC) standard for archival authorities was released to the international community for review. Warning: an EAC record is not your grandmother’s MARC authority record. EAC is a companion standard to Encoded Archival Description (EAD), yet now seems to be useful well beyond the world of archives. Managing collections archivally …

The current Pope, Benedict XVI, recently issued an encyclical devoted to social issues. In it the Pope expresses concern about unjust intellectual property practices and the use of them to withhold information from those most in need – views which are often made for our community in the more familiar venues of scholarly publishing and …

After successfully wrapping up a series of panel presentations at ALA, SAA and AAM, we’re now taking our LAMs to the UK. CILIP asked us to create a day-long event around library, archive and museum collaboration. Internally, we’ve code-named this event “Beyond ‘Beyond the Silos of the LAMs,’” since we’re using our report [pdf] as …

The main feature article in last week’s Times Higher, A threat to scientific communication: do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science?, by Zoë Corbyn, examines the scholarly journals system and asks some penetrating questions about dysfunctionality in the academy, at least in the UK. We are all aware of some troubling …

At the RLG Partnership Roundtable’s annual meeting last week during the SAA conference in Austin, the Roundtable’s membership elected two new co-chairs. I’d like to welcome Susan Hamson of Columbia University and David de Lorenzo of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, as the new leadership of the Roundtable. Congratulations David and Susan!

Earlier this week, I heard Dr Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, speak as part of the Long Now’s Seminars About Long Term Thinking (SALT) series. In his talk, he focused primarily on a part of the Smithsonian I confess I know a lot less about than its plethora of libraries, archives and museums: …

The Virtual International Authority File continues to both grow and improve. In July the sixteen source files together had 10,759, 910 usable name records, and 70.31% had related bibliographic records for matching. 30.33% of the name records matched at least one other source. Compare to April, where nine source files had a 28.36% match rate. …

Those of you in Austin for SAA might want to consider attending what promises to be a great panel presentation: SESSION 704 – Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Converging for Real – Sat., Aug. 15, 2009, 1:30 – 3 PM in Salon J We’ve got three great speakers who will tell the story of their experiences …

In an effort to help the RLG Partnership implement new technologies more easily and effectively, we are starting a series of webinars called “Technical Advances for Innovation in Cultural Heritage Institutions,” or TAI-CHI. There are two tracks: Instructional Track: The instructional track will provide a practical, efficient overview of key details for technical staff so …

Steve Knight, from the National Library of New Zealand, spoke about assessing risk in digital preservation for the keynote at SAA’s Research Forum this morning. Steve tossed off this phrase while addressing obsolescence, and it stuck with me all day. Yes, we say we want to preserve digital archives “forever,” while we’re not naive about …